


I'll Find You

by hayjolras



Category: Les Misérables (2012), Les Misérables - All Media Types, Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-23
Updated: 2013-05-23
Packaged: 2017-12-12 17:22:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 613
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/814070
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hayjolras/pseuds/hayjolras
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"From the space right behind Cosette, Éponine is watching, aware of the rain that is falling straight through her as if she isn’t really there at all."</p>
            </blockquote>





	I'll Find You

It's been raining for three days.

Three days since the funeral, where it poured over the cemetery and onto the mourners surrounding the white coffin, heads down in honor and to keep the blowing rain out of their eyes.

Cosette had kissed her red rose before placing it on the coffin, the raindrops looking like morning dew instead of a shower from the skies. She’d clutched Marius’s arm for support as she reached over and dropped the rose, thinking about how…her…favorite flowers weren’t roses — they were daisies — so uncharacteristic of her. But funerals are not for the dead, they are for the living, and Cosette could — can — count herself as one of the living.

She cried as the coffin was lowered into the ground, and she had known everyone knew she was crying. The rain had not hidden her tears nor her sobs and shaky legs as she held steadfast to Marius, not at all ready to say goodbye.

Three days later, she still isn’t, kneeling in the mud in front of the headstone, still crying as the cold rain dampens her hair and soaks her clothes to her skin, chilling her bones. Except Cosette can not feel it — cannot feel any of it as she kneels there and sobs, unable to speak, barely able to breathe as she’s suffocated by sorrow.

And Éponine can see it all.

From the space right behind Cosette, Éponine is watching, aware of the rain that is falling straight through her as if she isn’t really there at all. It nearly kills Éponine — if she wasn’t already dead, it would anyway. Because she knows the future that will follow Cosette, the shadows that will remain. She knows Cosette will hear Éponine’s laughter, will feel her lips on hers as she wakes up in the morning to an empty bed, see her shadow out of the corner of her eye when she least expects it. When Cosette awakens, blinking the sleep out of her eyes, caught in that limbo, she’ll forget, and for a few moments, Éponine will be alive again.

She can see it all. She knows now.

Éponine takes a step closer and puts a hand on Cosette’s shoulder. She knows Cosette can’t feel it, and even if she can, it will be a mere shiver, excusable because of the biting rain.

Cosette will be haunted by Éponine because Cosette is the one left remaining. Éponine will be haunted by Cosette because Éponine is the one who moved forward.

The living can haunt the dead, you know.

As Cosette begins to shake from the cold, Éponine leans over and gently kisses her pale cheek, letting her lips linger over Cosette the way they would when they were tangled in the sheets, giggling and sighing and moaning, sharing the most important of secrets, professing such big, bold things in quiet whispers…

Those lips linger as Cosette begins to cry, barely able to move, a dark hollowness in her chest where she suspects Éponine used to sit, whole and happy and alive. Éponine can feel it too; she has the same space in herself for Cosette, as well. So Cosette will find Éponine in the darkest of nights, the scariest moments, the joyous of days, and Éponine will find Cosette as she haunts, as she crosses, until comes Cosette is ready to come back to her. In those hollowed chests, they will find each other, and remember that there was a time where they could not tell where one girl ended and the next began, lives and love so intertwined it was almost fairy-tale like.

It was perfect.

And still, it rains…it rains…it rains…


End file.
